Dps jobs share at least 90% of their abilities

[Ath192]

Perfect balance will NEVER be achieved until the devs make every job carbon copies of each other, which they are well on their way of doing. Until then there will always be deviation that is exacerbated by the 1% and trickled down to the masses who don't know what they want to play.

It's an ironic cycle actual. Players don't know what they want to play because none of the jobs have any outstanding identity or uniqueness mechanically, so they just play whats good numerically. Devs see that there is a skew towards those jobs and further homogenized to achieve closer numeric balance and consequently even less uniqueness. Players lean further into the numerically advantageous jobs despite those jobs having a smaller advantage now.

Uniqueness and perfect balance are at odds, yes. But that doesn't mean uniqueness can't be balanced. And SE has just been exceptionally lazy with their job design decisions.

Honestly I feel like all they need to do is set a goal of X DPS for every job.

For example say that all DPS need to output 10,000 DPS.

Then, every job design should be able to get there regardless of what everyone else's rotation looks like or what everyone else does. And thats it. Some jobs will be harder, others easier, but it doesn't matter. The unique and disjointed ways all jobs get there should be based on what a DRG would do, a bard would do, according to their respective lores. People will be attracted to their preferred job style and looks.

In case of support classes or classes that share buffs all they need to do is subtract that from the total DPS. Say Dancers technical step can be designed to pump out 500 DPS from the party, so the job gets designed to output 9500 DPS + the buff. Now other party members may not play perfectly so they may make a little more or less but the difference will be negligible to where it wouldn't be excluded.

It sure beats homogenizing everything.

[TomsYoungerBro]

snip

You said a lot to not get my point...again. I did not say "homogenization" caused these issues, I clearly stated, and have continued to state, that homogenization hasn't solved the issue which its supposed to solve, which is neglect of certain classes.

[Mikey_R]

You said a lot to not get my point...again. I did not say "homogenization" caused these issues, I clearly stated, and have continued to state, that homogenization hasn't solved the issue which its supposed to solve, which is neglect of certain classes.

The problem here is you are trying to attribute more towards homogenisation than homogenisation was intended to fix.

All homogenisation done was allow each role to have a specific set of tools to ensure one is not picked over another. This is why, all the PRanged have a silence and a raid wide mitigation tool. They all also have another tool in Nature's Minne/Curing Waltz and Dismantle, all designed to help deal with mechanics.

At no point was homogenisation considered when making the jobs DPS rotation, except maybe putting everything into the 2 minute meta. Different DPS rotations are obviously going to have different effects when it comes to downtime, which ultimate tends to have a lot more of when compared to any other encounter. At this point, any job that fares better at utilising downtime is going to have a bigger advantage than a job that cannot. However, unless you want to make every job exactly the same, which noone wants, then you are never going to have homogenisation in this regard.

So, again, stop trying to claim homogenisation has failed to to what it was never meant to achieve.

[Mikey_R]

I guess it's a matter of perspective whether these examples play differently enough. If you take a step back and take into consideration every other kind of rotation in the game (example BRD, RDM, BLM) and the possibilities of rotations that could exist and do exist in other MMOs, it's not hard to see that in this game all the melee, tanks, and machinist have the same scheme with differing accents - the accents being the things you listed. Like yea there are significant differences but a zebra is a horse with stripes. I'm not saying that this scheme they all have is bad, I would just like some variety and creativity in new jobs that they introduce. Reaper and sage were extremely safe and familiar.

The thing is, at what perspective do you look from? I am looking at rotations as a whole and comparing them, whilst you seem to want to strip away various things until you get to something that you can claim looks the same and then use that to say all jobs play the same. Take it to the extreme and you can claim that, since all jobs use the GCD and oGCDs, they all play the same. Obviously, this is an absurd simplification which noone should take seriously, but it should highlight the fact that, if you ignore too much of something, everything is going to look the same.

[Derio]

The problem is if you design a job that doesnt have most or all of the items you have listed. That job becomes blacklisted and not used/wanted.

[TomsYoungerBro]

The problem here is you are trying to attribute more towards homogenisation than homogenisation was intended to fix.

All homogenisation done was allow each role to have a specific set of tools to ensure one is not picked over another.

Red Mage - Magic Barrier, Rez
Summoner - ???, Rez
Black Mage - ???, ???

Dang weird how the tools don't line up like how you said they are supposed to so one job isn't picked over another. It's like we keep trying to find a reason for homogenization to exist, but there is always a hole. Its like i've been trying to state from the start that homogenization hasn't solved what it was meant to do . It's only made the game worse. We can keep going for more examples of this if you'd like?

[Mikey_R]

Red Mage - Magic Barrier, Rez
Summoner - ???, Rez
Black Mage - ???, ???

Dang weird how the tools don't line up like how you said they are supposed to so one job isn't picked over another. It's like we keep trying to find a reason for homogenization to exist, but there is always a hole. Its like i've been trying to state from the start that homogenization hasn't solved what it was meant to do . It's only made the game worse. We can keep going for more examples of this if you'd like?

Weirdly enough, casters are the outlier in this. However, a res on BLM would be too strong due to infinite mana and SMN and BLM do both still have personal defensives, which Magick Barrier can also be used for, so it isn't as one sided as you make it out to be. Infact, with Summoner's being on a 60 second cooldown and having 2 charges, it makes it a very very useful and flexible tool that the other casters do not have, couple that with an easy job to play and you can see why SMN dominates the caster spot in TOP. This is the unique attributes of the job showing that it is much more favoured than the other 2 casters, which is, again, showing that having something more unique in the utility toolkit, as well as rotational differences, can make a job absolutely stand out as the clear favourite for a specific fight.

However, back to Bard, you still have not shown why homogenisation has meant that Bard doesn't get picked for TOP. Nothing you have stated shows this at all and infact, as I have stated multiple times now, every example you try and show proves the exact opposite. So again, stop trying to use homogenisation to talk about things it was never meant to fix.

[Absurdity]

However, a res on BLM would be too strong due to infinite mana

Would it really though? You already rarely run into the situation where MP is the limiting factor for chaining multiple raises. And in savage especially you're more likely to die to body-check mechanics before you ever run into MP issues from casting raise too much.

[Ath192]

Would it really though? You already rarely run into the situation where MP is the limiting factor for chaining multiple raises. And in savage especially you're more likely to die to body-check mechanics before you ever run into MP issues from casting raise too much.

How about an ability where a BLM instead gets a 20% dmg buff when someone is raised for the same amount of time the other person's weakness lasts? This would add excellent utility, a unique flavor, doesn't copy other jobs and would be more consistent with it's nature. Hey some casters can raise, but others can compensate for deaths on the dmg check. I also don't feel this would break the game.

[Absurdity]

How about an ability where a BLM instead gets a 20% dmg buff when someone is raised for the same amount of time the other person's weakness lasts? This would add excellent utility, a unique flavor, doesn't copy other jobs and would be more consistent with it's nature. Hey some casters can raise, but others can compensate for deaths on the dmg check. I also don't feel this would break the game.

I wouldn't be against it, then again I also don't have a horse in this race. All I'm saying is that BLM getting raise wouldn't be the disaster people think it is just because BLM "technically" has inifinite MP.